Animation Transformation

“Animation is not the art of drawings that move but rather the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame”.

- Norman Mclaren

I guess I've spent most of my time writing this blog as a movie and games fan, who happened to study digital animation, rather than an animation student who happens to specialise in movies and games. But today, for the first time, I watched Fantasmagorie - what is widely considered to be the first piece of animation ever released (1903). But then I watched another film afterwards, made in 2003, which recreated the characters from Fantasmagorie using 3D software and had them mimicking the original film - a true homage to the premiere of animation. But something wasn't quite kosher... why wasn't the 3D digital character, with 100 years of animation innovations riding on its back, the more interesting one?

100 years on and still not as exciting... oh look, some pigs just flew by.

It's this little feature that pretty much all 2D animators include in their characters called Metamorphoses.

The ability for the old hand-drawn, 2 dimensional character of the original Fantasmagorie to crouch down and tuck into a ball, and become an actual ball, seemed like magic to the 3 dimensional characters watching it... and in a way, it is still a magic that 3D won't be able to even touch for a while.

Don't get me wrong, I love 3D (I'm studying it) and I think it is the future of animation, but in the end the models a 3D artist create are but mere puppets which have strings set up but a rigger and pulled around by an animator. 2D (often referred to as 'traditional') animation has such character in itself that it is an artform.

I could delve into deep philosophical musings over the true meaning of art, but I'll just say what it means to me. Art is about expression and emotion: they are the characteristics that bring art to life, and they are also the features that justify categorising animation as art. The exaggerated movements and expressions of traditionally animated characters on screen often emote in a much more expressive and believable way than most real humans, and certainly more than the 'puppeteers' that are 3D animators (yes, like myself) can recreate with digital models.

BOOM: Headshot!

Violence in the media turns our children into homicidal psychopaths... apparently.

Remember when you first watched the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan? Remember how gruesome it was, and how it made you feel about the grim battlefield of Normandy? Remember how it introduced you to the main characters in one of the most critically acclaimed films of all time?

Ok, now imagine that whole scene if the soldiers had no guns, fired no bullets, and bled no blood... if I were you I'd head for the door.

The 'Politically Correct' version of Saving Private Ryan in South Park.

All the guns have been replaced by walkie-talkies.

Violence is always a buzzing hive of controversy in the media - the concern that the films and games that kids are engrossed in today are way too bloody and destructive... but without the blood and the shooting and fighting, who wants to pay for something they can't invest in?

It is true that so-called 'high-impact' games like Grand Theft Auto have been the source of blame for youngsters who've gone and stole a car or shot someone, but when you look at how many people play the GTA games on a regular basis, and what percentage of them go on murderous killing sprees it's not hard to see that it's such a vast minority that it raises doubt about how much of an impact media like that have on the human psyche.

And when it comes to fast-paced First-Person-Shooters (FPS) like Call of Duty, then why are they so loved by the very soldiers that the game is personifying (the very men and women who specialise and surround themselves in such 'violence')? These games are even being used by the US military to encourage potential recruits and train drone pilots, so surely all this 'senseless killing' is helping maintain world peace.

For anybody who has doubts over the moral fibre of shooters like Call of Duty then please read this article published shortly after it's release.

All in all, violence has a huge place in the media around us today, and rightly so. Any concerns about corrupting our nation's youth should be addressed with the parents and guardians, rather than the developers who are just trying to give people a fun, immersive experience.

Otherwise some of the most beloved and enjoyable films and games are going to be heavily censored - and nobody wants that.

...trust me: I played the Australian version of Left 4 Dead 2

To Infinity And Beyond

'Sci-Fi is only for geeks, I just like movies with aliens and robots in space'

The Sci-Fi genre has probably been the fastest growing genre in film over the last few decades. The disgusting aliens, destructive machines, and abundance of explosions strike a chord with at least 80% of the male population from the age of about 12. Sci-Fi movies are amongst the easiest to watch because they rarely require you to think about a complicated plot, or any ulterior motives that the characters may be hiding, or even to question your own moral choices. It's just "Here's an alien, they're bad. The humans aren't as strong or advanced as they are but they'll fight anyway cos they're the good guys".

You don't understand why they're doing what they're doing but there's shiny things and a lot of movement that keeps your attention.

We laughed with shiny keys as babies,

now we laugh at shiny robots as grown-ups

But, in the end, sci-fi (at least to me, a male 19 year old university animation student) is the chance for people to re-experience all those silly games we all played as kids... only this time it's on the cinema screen in front of you or at the behest of the the xbox/ps3 controller in your hands.

Out With The Old, In With The New

New Media - that just means more modernised special effects, right?

Clearly that's what separates movies of the 21st century from those of the 20th, and film-makers are more than eager to make use of rapidly evolving technology to jazz up their visual story-telling methods. But don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching the evolution of the narrative process... and it give's budding animators like myself an ever-growing career to enjoy.

Story-telling in New Media is much more immersive for the audience

thanks to updated animation technology

Notice that it's only been over the last 20 or so years that new and alternative methods of story-telling have emerged: older films have had a set pattern for them - beginning, middle and end, with a hero and villain, all viewed through regular cinematic perspective (basically, through the camera lens). But now, with the emergence of films like The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and District 9 (to name a few) where the use of a handheld camera or a documentary-style setup makes the audience believe that what's being portrayed on the screen could happen that way in real life. And with films like Vantage Point which replays the same 25 minute event, but through the perspectives of 8 different characters with the audience discovering something new through each character's eyes.

The counter-argument is that New Media is just a new way of telling the same old story over again. The biggest culprit is Avatar which spent billions in production, with some of the most realistic and immersive visual effects ever seen in cinema... but all of this to basically rehash the story of Dances with Wolves. The same goes for District 9 too: the segregation of aliens in South African society is reminiscent of the apartheid era, as well as having distinct similarities to the film Alien Nation.

They're the bad guys... right?

Everybody knows what it takes to make a hero: valour, honour, courage, a desire for justice, but the most important thing to make a hero is a villain.

I mean, where would Batman be without the Joker, or Sherlock Homes without Professor Moriarty,or the Doctor without the Master? Of course the only one suited to stop the ultimate bad guy is the ultimate good guy. The thing is... what makes a character good or bad?

We as an audience are expected to make a clear distinction between the righteous and the evil, and which characters in the story act for each. But when I really looked at what makes good and evil I found myself questioning the moral choices and motivations which suddenly meant that they weren't so bad.

In short, I'm wondering just how bad the bad guys really are.

The Doctor and The Master are opposing equals - binary opposites

Let's look at a TV villain that we've all come to recognise over their decades on our screens... The Cybermen.

The Cybermen, for those who don't know, are enemies of the Doctor in Doctor Who who, as regular humans, kept adding and modifying their bodies with cybernetics until they just became like robots. The reason that they're the bad guys is because they want to do the same to the rest of humanity, and we don't really approve of that. But in their eyes (or whatever they have), converting humans to Cybermen is improving them, it's a favour, they're effectively trying to help humanity... and isn't that one of those traits that make them good guys?

The great thing about considering this 'grey area' when viewing characters is that it extends to people in real life, and the horrific lens through which we view these people is reduced a little bit.

Now, I'm not going to start saying stuff like "Hitler was really a nice guy", but did he not bring his country out of economic depression and make it strong enough to take on the world?

Also why must we, the audience, automatically have to believe the supposed hero's testimony and judgement? Of course they're going to point to their opponents and say "I don't like them", but isn't that exactly what they're going to say about our supposed hero?

When Lost finally settled it's story theme down to an ultimate conflict between a man in white and a man in black, I naturally assumed that the Man In Black (whose name was never given) was the villain. But as the series developed and we got to explore that character and find out just why he wants to defeat the man in white, Jacob, I found myself questioning just who was in the right.The Man In Black was lied to as a child about the world outside of the Island and so he wanted to see it, whilst Jacob was set on keeping him trapped there. But in Jacob's quest to find a successor (and to prove the goodness in people) he brought people against their knowledge and will to the Island where nearly all of them suffered and died. And the one lucky person to survive this gauntlet would have to stay until they themselves were killed. This doesn't seem very noble or heroic, and it actually was a point raised in the show - whether or not the good guy was really the good guy.

This is the challenge I submit to you, oh-humble-reader, have a look at the different heroes and villains and wonder just who is who.

Crossing the Creative Crescent

How many times have we heard those infamous words "Damn you all to hell!" from Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes? It seems that no film or television episode can go without referencing or parodying this scene. But there is the simplest reason that writers include it... because it's a struggle to find somebody who wouldn't recognise it and smile (even just a little bit).

Even the latest episodes of Futurama couldn't resist

Now this is just the most notable example of the tongue-twister of a word that is intertextuality, but all it takes is just one dedicated nerd (hello there) to notice that almost everything we see on TV and in the movie theatres ends up referencing something else we've seen on TV or in the movie theatres or wherever you may go to get your narrative kicks.

Before I go further into this, please know that I consider this to be a good thing.

It was Peter Jackson, before the release of District 9, who said that Hollywood had basically run out of original ideas for movies (the irony here was the movie he was meant to be promoting was actually an expansion of a short film made by the same director over 15 years before). He was absolutely right - but I don't consider it to be such a bad thing like he did.

These little quips and in-jokes should get one of two reactions from a viewer:

1) A laugh or a smile as they get the reference :D

2) There is no reaction, as it wouldn't make a difference to how they view the movie/episode :|

So when you find yourself watching Tim Burton's 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes and wondering why your parents make such a fuss over Charlton Heston repeating his own infamous line - why not go watch the 1968 version and see for yourself what all the fuss is about.

It's an education.

Can You Tell What It Is Yet?

The issue of realism is something that people will always mention when talking about some form of animation - an amateur art/film critic would say that's because it adds to the audience's investment into the piece. But when you look at the most successful animated films in cinema (Toy Story, The Lion King, UP, just to name a few) and you'll see that none of their art styles try to be photorealistic, and yet the vast majority of cinephiles love them. For artists there's this phrase called 'The Uncanny Valley', which is this gap of accuracy when an artist tries to make an image perfectly realistic.

For any budding artist who ponders of entering this metaphorical valley, my warning to you is not to, or you will plummet into the river of failure that awaits at the bottom.

The biggest example of this attempt at realism which resulted in a box office flop was Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The artist's that slaved away on modelling the characters were raving about how photorealistic they looked, and how they were, pretty much, closer to live-action actors than any other piece of animation. But if you look at the image below, ask yourself "do real humans really look that perfect?"

The perfectly symmetrical human face is a rookie mistake for artists

So if the realistic approach is a doomed venture for animation artists, what do the masters (that are Disney and Pixar) do to create such immersive art styles? That answer's easy - just distance yourself from The Uncanny Valley and go for a more stylised and illustrative approach.

Take films like Cars or Finding Nemo: the characters in these films aren't trying to look like they're from the real world, but a place where vehicles and fish have large eyes, don't have the usual details that their real-world counterparts do, and can talk to each other. This makes the audience stop comparing them so heavily to how their minds tell them the characters should look like.

Even Disney's semi-animated cult classic Tron doesn't attempt to make the virtual tanks or light cycles look real because they're part of a computer system (as well as any technical limitations the animators had at the time).

In short, the significance of realism in animation is still very important because it can make or break a film. But it seems that the key to a successful art style is to stop trying to make it look realistic and make it more exaggerated.

After all, when you create an animated world you make the rules - rules that the audience have to follow when they watch it...